


Gone, For Good

by ChloeWeird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brief Mention of Disordered Eating, Codependency, Depression, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Nightmares, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8419945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChloeWeird/pseuds/ChloeWeird
Summary: It was okay. Stiles could push on, keep missing Peter like he'd miss his dominant hand. Peter was coming back, and soon. He smiled against the window as Scott drove them away from Peter's grave to wait for him at home.Not much longer now.____________*Don't let the MCD tag scare you. This is Peter we're talking about.*





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the angst fest! This is by far the angstiest thing I've ever written, but don't worry. I can't promise that you won't hate me by the end, but I can tell you that it will end happily. Trust me!

One. Stiles was distracted from landing the final blow to the harpy he'd been fighting by a quiet, choked-off cry, and his insides went from hot with battle lust to cold as mined iron.

Two. Before he could turn around to see, the harpy had gotten back up again, but far less steady this time, so it only took two more quick hits in rapid succession to finish it off.

Three. He turned around. He dropped his baseball bat and ran toward the sound, but even from 15 feet away, he could feel that it was too late.

Four. Five. Six. He was at Peter's side, shaking him, slapping his face and recoiling at how cool his skin already was. Peter said nothing, did nothing. Was nothing. There was no final exhale or last squeeze of Stiles' palm. Nothing. Peter was gone.

Seven. Eight. Nine. Stiles lost count. He was too busy falling.

***

They buried Peter's body in a clearing in the preserve, in a small circle of trees on the side farthest from the highway and as close as possible to the stream that wound through the forest. That was where Peter had always gravitated toward on full moon nights when he ran with the pack. _Follow the river,_ he'd explained to Stiles when he'd come home in the early morning, naked but soaking wet and cold as ice. If it doesn't take you home, at least it'll take you someplace interesting.

Not a single person in the pack mentioned the possibility of cremation.

There wasn't any kind of funeral. Just a circle of pack members who didn't know what to say. _Peter, we hardly knew ye_ seemed apt, except that one person had known him. Stiles had known him, as well as anyone could know another person when they'd been something to each other for 10 years. He'd known Peter as an enemy. An annoyance. An aggravation, then not, then again, but for a different reason. Then a friend, and then…

10 years. And now, Stiles didn't know what to do with himself. He needed to leave the grave site. That was on his immediate to-do list. It was getting cold, and it was already dark, and his friends around him were getting uncomfortable. They had no reason to stare at the plain stone marker, or trace the ceremonial spiral with their eyes until they reached the end, then go back the other way, over and over until it was too dark to see.

Some of them would miss Peter. Maybe? They'd miss his knowledge, and the way he made Stiles smile. But Stiles could tell that a few of them felt relieved. No matter how many years had passed since Peter had stopped being on his own side and started being on Stiles', whoever's side that was, they could never relax and know with the kind of bone-deep certainty that Stiles did that he would have their backs. It must be nice, Stiles thought, bitterly, to have that weight off their shoulders.

What to do. What to do? Last week, if he'd had to spend hours out in the preserve, he would have gone straight home--His and Peter's home--as soon as he could and poked his cold toes into Peter's thigh just to get a reaction. Peter would bitch-face, then rub the circulation back into his iceblock feet.

Now...were his feet cold? He couldn't tell. He hadn't been able to tell if he was too warm or too cold, or hungry, or tired since Peter died. He was numb.

"Stiles?"

He jerked when Scott appeared at his side. While he hadn't been paying attention, everyone had drifted away. Stiles and his best friend were the only ones left at the gravesite, looking at the plot of recently overturned earth. How long ago had they left? The light was completely out now.

"We should go," Stiles said, making no move to do so.

Scott slung a gentle arm across Stiles' shoulders and guided his stiff, stumbling steps toward the path they'd taken to get here. "Yeah, we should. Come on, bud. Let's get you home. Your dad told me he'd meet us there, he's driving the jeep back--"

"No."

Scott's gait faltered, and his fingers twitched on Stiles' back. "Dude, it's getting really cold. I don't think you should stay out here."

Stiles waved away Scott's concerns. "No, I mean--I want to go to the apartment. Thanks for the ride, but I want…" He wanted to be in his and Peter's place, that Stiles had moved 90% of the way into and covered with his scent and his stuff, mingling with Peter's. "Yeah, I really have to be there."

"But, your dad--"

"He'll live."

Stiles started walking to the car, knowing Scott would follow eventually, and that he wouldn't bring up the topic again. He'd been tiptoeing around Stiles these last few days, backing down easier because he was afraid he would push too hard. That was fine with Stiles. There were conversations he supposed he should be having, about the future and what his plans were now, but he wasn't up to having them, least of all with his father.

John Stilinski was a simple man. He understood true love, and forgiveness and redemption, but he also thought most of those things only happened in movies. The real world was a lot more unforgiving, or at least, he thought it should be. He'd always thought his son should be slower to forgive, and though he hadn't wasted the breath saying it out loud, his opinion on the matter of his son's choice of life partner had been crystal clear. So, no, Stiles wasn't about to have any heart-to-hearts with his dad with the spectre of John's satisfaction hanging over them.

The trip to the car was longer than it had been in the other direction, when the sun had still been setting, but they were unlocking the door and heading home soon enough. Scott drove, so Stiles leaned his head against the cold glass of the window, and the chill was like a simulated migraine that he could control and stop at any second, except that he was finally feeling something again. The numbness went away as they drove, like it really had been caused by the cold air, but Stiles knew it hadn't, even as his skin started to sting and burn as it warmed. Yes, he could feel things again, but he wasn't sure if that was a good thing.  

God, he missed Peter. He missed him like a limb, an important one, too. He felt off balance because the support that he leaned on every day suddenly was absent. He never thought he would be the kind of person to cultivate a relationship like he and Peter had. "Dangerously codependent," they'd been called, and rather than being offended, Stiles and Peter had shrugged. They knew it. They knew it wasn't healthy to rely on each other so heavily, but there wasn't anything they could--or would--do to change it. They were too satisfied with what they had.

Now, he had to go home and be in the space he and Peter occupied together, their little universe separate from the pack, because none of the pack ever wanted to cross the threshold into that danger zone. All his memories of it were with Peter. He had so few that relied on just himself, so it was bound to be painful every minute he was there.

But it was okay, he reminded himself, like he had been since they first pulled him away from Peter's cold body. He could push on, keep missing Peter like he'd miss his dominant hand. He had to go back and hurt himself by sitting in his favourite chair that wouldn't be as comfortable if he didn't have Peter's lap to prop his feet on. He had to do it because their place couldn't start to smell abandoned or disused. It wouldn't be right, and it wouldn't be nice to come home to.

It needed to be as perfect as Stiles could make it because he wouldn't have to wait much longer. Peter was coming back, and soon.

Stiles smiled against the window as Scott drove them away from Peter's grave toward Peter's home, to wait.

Not much longer now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little teaser chapter for you, to start us off. I'll be posting the next one tomorrow (Oct 31). The fic is completely written, but I'm still editing, so I'll be posting as often as I can, probably every two days, depending on how quickly I can make it through the draft.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter died on a Thursday. They buried him on Saturday, then Stiles spent Sunday wallowing in the empty spaces next to him on the couch, in their bed, on the kitchen counter where there was only one mug of coffee to be poured.

On Monday, he woke up early, showered away his sloth, and got dressed for work. He had his breakfast and once again missed Peter viscerally when there was no one but a memory to make fun of him for eating Lucky Charms as an adult. He shook it off, reminding himself that distracting his brain with work was the best thing he could possibly do.

He parked in his normal space at the library, and was at the reference desk with a new cup of coffee by 8:56. He was even able to smile a bit at Peter's voice in his head bitching about how K-cups were the worst thing to happen to the environment since cars had surged in popularity. _See_ _,_ he told himself. _You can do this. You can keep living your life until everything is good again._

His co-workers were gentle with him all morning, so he figured he must look worse than he'd thought. A few of them might have known that he'd called in some personal emergency days, but he'd never told any of them that he was even dating someone, let alone that that someone had…

They'd stopped treading softly around him by lunch time and Stiles was grateful. The routine was good for him, and sometimes he would forget about Peter for as long as 15 minutes at a time.

It was eye-opening, really. He hadn't even noticed how many of his thoughts in a given day revolved around who he had waiting for him at home. A book someone wanted him to find sounded like something Peter would like. A grumpy 30-something forced to use the library computers complained hilariously, and Stiles vowed to relate it to Peter later. It was surprising, and aggravating. This way that he was missing Peter wasn't like when he'd gotten into college and was homesick for his Dad and his own clean, nice-smelling room. He could, and did, phone or text his dad, see how he was doing, promise to visit as soon as he could spare a weekend. He could book bus tickets and count down the days until he could hug his dad and Scott in person, instead of virtually.

This was different. Pictures of Peter and screenshots of old texts only made his chest ache, because there was no end date here. He couldn't mark it on the wall calendar in red sharpie and count down the days because he didn't know how long it would be until Peter was back. All he had was _soon_ and that was somehow more painful than six months or a year would have been, because he didn't _know_.

At four, he decided to take off early, and the head librarian waved him off. He probably still looked a bit pale and pinched. God knew he felt like it. Sat in his car, he took out his phone and switched it on for the first time since his lunch break. Three texts from Scott popped open as soon as it booted up.

_Hey man I'm at your place, you aren't here? You at your dads?_

_Your dad says you aren't. Where are you dude? Please text back._

_Dude, I'm worried. Where u at?_

Stiles tapped out a few letters of a response, then erased them. He tried again, but the second attempt wasn't any better. He had no idea what to say, and everything he tried in his head sounded dickish or ungrateful.

Scott was at his place? Scott had only been there a handful of times in the five years Stiles had called it home. It was never made official since Stiles' name wasn't on the lease, but Peter's apartment had been considered Stiles' place for a long time. Probably ever since he'd started leaving his laptop charger there instead of carting it back to his father's house.

In the end, he didn't send a response, choosing instead to drive home and hope that saying something in person would soothe the sting of his shortage of tact. Scott was outside the apartment building pacing when Stiles pulled into his dedicated space. He wasn't even fully out of the car before Scott was throwing himself into Stiles' arms and holding him tight.

Stiles let the hug happen for a good 10 seconds, even patting Scott's back comfortingly before he detangled himself. Scott took a stumbling step back, embarrassed, but visibly relieved. Stiles pinned him with a look.

"Dude."

Scott winced. "I know. Your dad told me I should calm way down, but I…" Scott stopped boring a hole in the sidewalk and looked penetratingly at Stiles. "You feel things so deeply, man. I worry about you."

Scott was smarter than everyone gave him credit for--especially now, with the sheen worn off the naivete he was born with--and he'd always been able to see right through Stiles. Even back when he couldn't understand the darkness in his best friend's soul, he could see it, and knew how to talk Stiles around it.

"Come on," Stiles said, jerking his shoulder toward the door of the apartment complex and heading inside.

Stiles led the way up the stairs and punched in the code to unlock the door. ("Keys can always be copied, Stiles, remember that," Peter had said when he shelled out the money to have the system installed. "Random four-digit passcodes are the way of the future for people like me." "And me, now," Stiles had replied. "Yes, I suppose so.")

He dropped his lunch cooler on the counter and opened the fridge to grab a couple of cans of coke. His hosting abilities had improved under Peter's nagging, and he wouldn't backslide now, not when Scott was already worried about him. It was best to act as normal as possible.

He turned around to offer the drink to Scott, but he was alone in the kitchen. He frowned and went back to the entry way. Scott had stalled just outside of the door, looking up at the jamb like it had teeth. Stiles realized that it had been a long while since Scott had come over, and even then, they hadn't reached the level of comfort that they had at the Sheriff's house, where Scott could walk right in and help himself to his own drink, or run up the stairs to wait for Stiles to get home.

Stiles sighed, the old feeling of bitterness making his chest feel as cold as his palms were getting around the chilled, sweating soda cans.  

"You're not a vampire," he said, as blankly as he could. "Besides, even if you were, you were invited."

"Sorry." Scott grimaced guiltily and wiped his palms as he crossed the threshold and took the drink offered to him. "You guys marked this territory up so well, it just feels…"

Stiles nodded like he understood and turned away from Scott, heading into the living room to keep from saying what he knew Scott was thinking. It felt wrong, to Scott, even after all this time. Stiles didn't know if it was the werewolf in Scott recognizing and rejecting a former alpha, or a territorial possessiveness over his best friend, or a completely human discomfort over their entire relationship, but Stiles being anywhere near Peter would always feel wrong to Scott.

They flopped down onto the plush leather couch and Stiles sank in gratefully. Work had tired him out, it seemed. He hadn't done anything more strenuous than normal, but the effort of trying not to think had taken a lot out of him. He closed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the top of his drink, enjoying the _tink tink_ sound it made. and bracing himself for Scott to break the silence. He didn't have to wait long.

"Why did you go to work?" Scott asked gently. "You know they'd give you some time off, and I think you should. Chill out for a while. Deal with everything. We'll be here to help you."

Stiles' eyes popped open, but he stared at the top of his can instead of at Scott. "I am dealing with it. You know the best way for me to deal is to be busy."

"Yes, I know that, but this is--this isn't just a normal brush with danger."

Stiles nodded and let his eyes wander over to the bookshelf that was crammed on every shelf with thrillers and history books, in an order that was comprehensible only by Stiles himself. One of the only things on that shelf that wasn't a book was a picture frame. In it, there was a photo of two people, darkly silhouetted in front of a beach and a fantastic sunset.

It was pretty much the only photo Stiles had of him and Peter, because as much as Peter loved and was skilled at bathroom selfies with filters that solved the problem of the camera flash, none of those filters seemed to agree with Stiles' skin tone. Peter had exacting standards when it came to photos of himself, and while he managed to make weird sepia overlays look old-timey and cool, Stiles just seemed like he was trying too hard. So Peter got to keep his bathroom selfies to himself (and to Stiles, when he was staying over at his dad's for once and needed a bit of a thrill to help him sleep without nightmares) but he shelled out the money to take Stiles all the way to Hawaii so that they could have one picture of the two of them against a spectacular background.

Looking at that picture yesterday, Stiles had been sad. He missed catching Peter looking at it while ostensibly searching for a book on the shelf, muttering how alphabetical order was invented for a reason, but not really scanning the shelves with any intent. Today, with a little more clarity, it calmed him. Peter showed his affection like that, in lavish gestures and seemingly selfish whims, that had to be decoded into what they actually were: I love yous.

"I'm fine, Scott," Stiles said, smiling and knowing it reached his eyes for the first time in days. "It'll all be okay."

Scott was silent for a while, staring into Stiles' face with a slight frown creasing his forehead.

"You…you aren't lying," he stammered eventually. "You actually believed that."

"Of course I did. Do you think I'd lie to you?" The answer to that question was yes, he would, which is why he'd phrased it in the form of a question instead of vowing that he'd never do such a thing. He'd been around werewolves long enough to turn their superpowers against them when it was for the greater good. 

Scott shook his head. "White lies don't count. The words and the truth in them don't matter as much as the willingness to try. I gotta tell you, Stiles, I really didn't think you'd be telling the truth. I came here hoping that you'd be able to talk to me, and that you'd be able to say you're alright even though you obviously wouldn't be."

Annoyance flared, fanned by Scott's gentle, understanding tone. "You say it like it's a bad thing that I'm dealing with this."

"No, not at all. That's not what I meant." Scott clunked his soda can onto the coffee table-- ignoring Peter's little pile of coasters--and clenched his fists in his lap, visibly attempting to craft his next sentence with a care he hadn't shown in high school. "All I meant to say was that I've been where you are, and I know exactly how you've been feeling, and I know that I wasn't okay so soon after…"

Stiles' brain seemed to sharpen, like it was coming into stark focus after hours of blur. "Allison?" He hissed. "You're comparing this to Allison?"

Scott seemed taken aback by the change in Stiles. "Yes? You've lost someone you loved, someone who loved you back. Regardless of what I think of Peter--"

"You really think he's gone?"

Scott froze, his mouth open around the beginning of what would have turned into another subtle dig at Peter. Stiles watched as realization dawned in Scott, and he sat up straighter, more stiff. Stiles supposed he should have been a little surprised as well, that his best friend hadn't been able to read his mind. He hadn't been able to do that for a while now, actually, so maybe not much of a surprise.

"Yes, I do," Scott said, carefully, so carefully, like Stiles would bust into fragments. "Stiles, I saw--"

"Then you're not as smart as I thought you were."

Scott snapped back as if struck, then drew breath to say something defensive and rightfully indignant. But then, oh yes, Scott remembered, Stiles was breakable. Scott couldn't chastise Stiles into apologizing for getting out of line and attacking his intelligence. (A learned behaviour, a default setting when Stiles was feeling on edge and out of his depth. Scott had so few flaws that it had been necessary to build up one in his head until it was far out of real-life proportion. Scott wasn't stupid. They both knew it, but they both conveniently forgot when it suited them and they needed to wound.)

Scott was struck speechless, but Stiles immediately felt bad anyway. He reached over to Scott's unopened can of coke and put it and his own back in the fridge, giving Scott--and himself--a few blissfully eye contact-free moments of recovery.

Stiles wouldn't apologize. He was taking full advantage of his status as a grieving widower to say exactly what he meant. If Scott hadn't figured out that Peter being gone was a temporary thing, then that wasn't Stiles' problem. That didn't mean Scott deserved to be attacked for it, though.

Stiles came back into the living room, and Scott's expression was still stunned and a little vacant. He lurched to his feet when he saw Stiles and crowded close, putting a comforting hand on Stiles' shoulder.

"Stiles--"

"I'm really tired," he interrupted, firmly. "I think I'm going to go have a nap, if you don't mind."

Using Scott's outstretched arm to herd him, he nudged Scott toward the door.

"But I think we should--"

"Thanks for coming to check on me, but I'm really okay. If my dad asks you, tell him I'll call him when I wake up."

"Stiles, you--"

"Might not be until tomorrow, though, because I'm beat."

He gave a theatrical yawn as he opened the door, then he leaned against it with Scott on the other side staring desperately at the closing gap of the apartment door.

"Alright, I'll do that," Scott agreed, quickly, a bit frantically, "but don't you think--"

"Great. Bye, Scott."

Stiles shut the door with a snap and the security panel beeped, locking him in. It was a thick door, solid metal with a core of mountain ash that activated only when it was closed. That was yet another reason to get rid of the standard lock and key system that'd come with the apartment. With a simple modification to the wiring and the mechanism, Peter was able to install a mountain ash barrier that he could operate by himself, keeping other werewolves out, or himself safely in.

One more bonus was that they'd made it soundproof. Peter had decided he'd rather keep his business private than have the ability to hear what was going on in the hallway outside his door. That meant that when Stiles leaned exhaustedly against the door, he couldn't tell if Scott had left, but he could also be sure Scott couldn't tell he was still there, his heart beating faster than normal and his vision swirling with the sparkles that sometimes precluded a panic attack.

Stiles flattened his palms against the door, using its solidity to pull himself back from his anxiety. He swore and buried his face in his hands as soon as he was back on solid ground. It was shitty of him to be so cagey and anti-social, but Scott…

Scott was so very honest with everyone in his life, and he'd gained a pragmatism over the years that Stiles admired. The problem was that Stiles was afraid that Scott would make it easy to give in to the idea--the _lie_ \--that Peter was never coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Nov 2


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles stared down at the bag of Doritos in his hand, crinkling the foil as he tried to decide whether he wanted to add it to his basket. He didn't have much in it, just a loaf of rotgut white Wonder Bread and a quart of milk. The basics. He was having a lot of trouble choking down much more than a peanut butter sandwich most evenings.

He'd never had a huge appetite, even when he'd been a teenager and growing like a weed. The Adderall hadn't helped, and Stiles' parents had spent most of his childhood trying to pin him down to the table and eat something before he passed out. After his mom died, he got a lot better at taking care of himself, mostly as a byproduct of taking care of his dad, but whenever something stressful happened--a test, a botched social interaction, a werewolf trying to rip him to shreds--he'd go right back to skipping meals accidentally and having to buy gross meal replacement shakes so he could keep his hands from trembling.

His relationship with his appetite hadn't changed much, even though he'd halved his Adderall dosage. He still felt queasy every time he was remotely stressed or out of sorts, and this week, he thought he definitely qualified as stressful and way out of the ballpark of "sorts." He'd packed the same bedraggled tuna salad sandwich and bruised apple for lunch every day for the past five, hoping that he'd sit down in the breakroom one afternoon and suddenly not be too wired to eat.

It was a constant battle he was fighting, and at the moment, he wasn't sure if he was winning or not. When he'd been confronted by the massive display of Doritos--there was some new variety being announced, or something--his mouth had actually watered at the thought of some Cool Ranch flavour dust on his tongue. So he'd grabbed a bag, feeling triumphant for a good few seconds, but then he was hit by indecision. Sure, if he ate these, he could say he ate _something_ , some form of sustenance that didn't come in powdery-liquid form, but if that something was Doritos--sodium-filled, chemical-blasted, nutrition-value-of-cardboard corn chips--would that really be better than just going without? He was getting by on protein bars and Slim-Fast. Then, there was always the chance that he'd get home, bust open the bag that had looked so tempting, and the smell would turn his stomach, and he would've bought them for nothing.

He put the bag back on the shelf regretfully and picked up his basket, content for now with his milk and bread. At the end of the aisle, between him and the self-checkout station, was Lydia, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her toe poised to start tapping any second. Stiles stood as still as she did until she jerked her head toward the entrance of the store and walked away without a backward glance.

Stiles looked regretfully down at his milk and bread. He could spend the five minutes it would take to purchase them before he followed her, but she'd give him that look. He hadn't seen her since they'd put Peter in the ground, and he didn't really want to start their first visit with being regarded like a bug on the bottom of a shoe, however fond she might appear of that bug.

They had a complicated relationship, but Stiles found that doing as he was told always led to the best outcome. He left the basket on the floor next to the Doritos display and exited the store.

Lydia had claimed a bench on the shady side of the building, which was surrounded by cigarette butts and batches of chewed gum on the sidewalk. It was probably an employee hang out, and Stiles wondered how many people she'd had to glare into submission to get it to herself. He took a seat beside her, sinking onto the shabby, splinter-magnet wood with a grunt of effort. Everything in his body seemed to be stiff or achy these days, and he hadn't yet figured out how much was psychosomatic and how much of it came from the constant, nagging tension he was carrying around. The answer would come in time, or it wouldn't. Hopefully, it wouldn't matter for much longer, because Peter would be back soon.

He smiled at the thought, turning his face to the sky and looking through the leaves of the tree that sheltered the bench. Already, he'd started using that mantra to calm himself down and bring him out of the occasional downward spiral. It wasn't a long-term solution because he couldn't very well be chanting in his head every minute of the goddamned day, but it was good to have a reminder that everything would be okay when he was slapped in the face by remembering of the fact that, oh, Peter had died.

That asshole. He was a wily bastard, and had perfected his skills in avoidance and defensive retreat in the womb, but he couldn't dodge one harpy? It was ridiculous, and frankly, selfish, in Stiles opinion--

"You get a very particular look on your face when you think about him, you know."

"Hmm?" Stiles blinked the washed-out blue sky out of his eyes.

Lydia smiled tightly. "I can always tell that you're thinking about Peter because you always smile like you want to stab and kiss someone at the same time."

"That's pretty accurate, actually," Stiles allowed. Sometimes the stabbing he wanted to do was the fun kind, but Peter was the most infuriating person he'd ever met, and he'd met _himself_. Their relationship worked because while they both rubbed other people the wrong way, they managed to rub each other just right. He scrunched his nose at the metaphor playing out in his head. It wasn't ideal because even to him it seemed like it was only about sex stuff, which was great, but they managed to fit their personalities snugly together as well.

"I've missed you," Lydia said, and she took Stiles' hand, squeezing it, then pulling it into her lap to hold with both hands.

"I've missed you too, Lyds. It's been...you know. The week from hell." Almost two, now, in actual fact, but who was counting? Aside from Stiles, who was still counting the hours.

"I get it."

Lydia was great at comfortable silence. Stiles had gotten better at it with her tutelage, but it was easiest with her, because he usually felt like he was on equal footing with her, so he didn't have to compensate for anything with random factoids or narrations of his day.

They weren't the friends who rushed to each other's sides in times of grief or trauma. Stiles had Scott for that, and Lydia had herself. But they were still best friends of another type. They each knew they could rely on the other if, for some reason, they did need a shoulder to cry on or a steadying hand, so Stiles figured that was just as good. They were better at helping each other with the fallout, the aftermath of their latest catastrophe.

This was a different case, however. Stiles would be absolutely thrilled to pour his heart out to Lydia right now. He thought it was pretty understandable that he had a few things he'd love to get off his chest. Those few things felt like they weighed more every day and he knew it would get hard to breathe eventually. But Lydia wasn't the person he was going to spill all that out to, because while they might be good friends, there were certain things that they just didn't talk about.

Stiles getting together with Peter had almost broken their friendship, but they were both too selfish for that. They liked each other and needed a level of intellectual stimulation that they couldn't really get from other pack members. Stiles had found himself willing to forgive, but Lydia hadn't, so they simply didn't talk about it. (For his part, Peter very much approved of Stiles and Lydia's friendship, but neither of them really cared about his opinion on that.) It was less difficult to work around than Stiles had thought it would be, but it got a little harder after Lydia also had something they couldn't talk about.

Lydia had let Jackson back into her life a couple of years ago when he moved to LA. They were ostensibly fuckbuddies, and Lydia maintained she could break it off at any time, should she find someone she actually wanted to be in a relationship with, but Stiles wasn't so sure. It was always Lydia who drove the three hours it took to meet him, never the other way around. Also, one of the primary guidelines of fuckbuddying was that neither of the participants continued the arrangement if an actual relationship was a viable choice, but Stiles had seen Lydia blow off more perfectly good-looking, non-creepy guys in the last year than he had in their entire high school career.

So they talked about things other than their romantic lives, even though it felt more and more of a glaring omission as the years went by. All their friends and college acquaintances were pairing off and getting hitched, applying for joint bank accounts, getting boring together and staying in watching Modern Family. It was hard to be at the age they were and not complaining or commiserating with each other about how they felt like they should be nesting as hard as they could. It was just too awkward and frustrating for them both.

"Did you talk to Scott?" Stiles asked because Lydia probably wasn't there simply to hold his hand and encourage him to cry on her shoulder.

"I did. You know what he told me."

"Yeah." Stiles flipped his palm around so that he was resting his sweaty, twitchy hands overtop of her still, manicured ones. "You don't agree with me."

She tilted her head and looked at him, pity in her eyes. Stiles wouldn't tolerate it from anyone else. "No. I don't. I keep expecting to start hallucinating or losing time, but there's nothing. Just me in my head. We have no reason to believe that he could resurrect himself a second time."

She looked away, speaking to the shady video store across the street instead of to him.

"I didn't like Peter. I'll never forgive him for what he did to me, but I know that this is causing you pain, and it'll continue to do so. So, no, I don't think he's coming back, but for once, I wish he was." She sniffed and tapped the fingers of her free hand on her knee. "You'll never hear me say that again, so you'd better cherish it."

"I will." His lips formed a reflexive smile that he didn't mean at all. "I don't know, Lydia. Part of me knows that I can trust you and that I should listen to you. But the other part is just...sure. He'll come back. He will. I believe it, and something in my heart just knows it's the truth."

He felt like an evangelical preacher trying to convert the resolute atheist. He had no basis of evidence to think what he was saying was true, but his conviction was as unshakeable as her doubt. They were at an impasse, and once again it was about Peter. Neither of them would budge on it, so Stiles brought Lydia's hand to his lips and kissed the back of it, then stood up from the bench and walked away.

It would be nice to have her in his life again after two long weeks, and he knew she would start to text him again now that they **had** talked about the elephant in Beacon Hills, but he could only take her misplaced sympathy for so long. She was a smart one, but she didn't know Peter like Stiles did. It stung that she, of all people, couldn't understand Peter's determination to live, but that was her old--and justified--hurt talking.

She'd understand in time, when Peter showed up and proved her wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Friday Nov 4.  
> Guyyyyys I got a root canal tomorrow. Prai 4 meeeeee


	4. Chapter 4

_The light in the hallway flooded the room and Stiles blinked his eyes to adjust as he woke up. He momentarily cursed his lack of foresight in choosing the side of the bed closest to the door, but then he remembered that he wouldn't have been able to sleep if he hadn't. Gotta have an escape route, and the window was way too far a fall for his human bones. He tensed to leap out of his warm, comfy bed, but he recognized the shape in the doorway._

_"You're home?" He asked the silhouette, then grumbled into his pillow when he saw Peter's white teeth flash in a mocking smile._

_"No, I'm in Milan. This is just a figment of your imagination."_

_"Shut up, I'm asleep." He pulled the covers over his head and stayed there until the bed dipped beside him._

_"Hmm, so I see. It's a shame."_

_Stiles flopped over onto his back, sniffling and rubbing his eyes to clear the sleep from them. Peter was seated on the edge of his bed, his tie already discarded and the buttons on his shirt half undone._

_"Why?" Stiles asked._

_"You have three guesses, and the first two don't count."_

_Stiles snickered, his mostly-conscious brain finding that way funnier than it actually was. He reached across the bed and curled his arms around Peter's waist, burying his face in the softer space under his rib cage, bare now that the shirt had been tossed across the room._

_"I missed you," he mumbled, dragging his fingers across warm skin._

_"I was only gone for two days."_

_"I know."_

_Peter leaned forward and dislodged Stiles to untie his shoes, toeing them off then standing to get rid of everything else. "I missed you too," he admitted as he climbed into bed, gathering Stiles up in his arms._

_They kissed in the dark under their covers, overheated but too comfortable to face the harsh chill throwing them back would bring. Stiles grabbed at Peter's sides when making out was no longer enough, pulling Peter's weight on top of him to hold him down. Peter obliged, straddling Stiles' hips and kissing him harder, taking charge and leading them where they both wanted to go._

_Peter's hands were everywhere, soothing, stroking, up his arms, over his chest, up past his collarbone. On his neck, holding firmly, pressing down, bruising--_

_"Peter," he choked. He couldn't breathe. "Peter, stop."_

_Peter was silent. The ring of his hands tightened, and the pressure built. Stiles could feel the blood rushing to purple the skin of his face. He would swear he could hear his trachea creaking under the weight of Peter's hands._

_Peter's face contorted as Stiles watched, and mottled, melting burn scars popping up on the side of his face. His mouth moved, and might have been saying something cruel or disgusting, but the world had gone completely silent while Stiles suffocated. He couldn't even hear the roar of his blood in his ears anymore, he could only see Peter's slash of a smile and his cold, cold eyes, and he couldn't breathe, he was dying--_

He bolted up and lurched over the side of the bed, stumbling to the bathroom. He made it to the toilet seconds before he retched and choked on bile and the remains of the banana he'd eaten before he went to bed. He heaved grotesquely until there was nothing left, then he slumped against the wall next to the bathroom cabinet.

His body twitched with shivers, but he didn't feel steady enough to get up, and he didn't really feel like a trip to the emergency room when he inevitably fell over and bashed his head on the sink. So he curled up, his skin prickling with cold, in the dark because he hadn't had the time to flick on the light before he was puking his guts out. His throat burned, his ribs were aching, and his heart rate had yet to even out.

"Fuck," he gasped, pressing his palms into his eyes. They were sore from the force of his gagging, and they were probably red and puffy, as well as bruised underneath. God, he was so tired, he could probably just nod off right where he was if he didn't know he'd wake up with a backache for the ages.

He tore off a long piece of toilet paper and blew his nose, wincing at the burn of misplaced vomit. He threw it into the toilet, along with another piece he used to wipe his sweaty forehead, then flushed everything away. He had to use the counter to get himself standing, but once he was there, he felt mostly solid, so he brushed his teeth until he was sure he wouldn't get the spins on the way back to bed. He considered having a shower, but he was going to be sleep-deprived at work the next day as it was. He needed to sleep as much as he could more than he needed to get the stench of fear sweat off of his body.

His skin felt sunburned and sensitive as he slipped between his sheets, but he knew from experience that that would go away in a few minutes if he could relax enough to stop the trembling. He burrowed in, kneading his sternum to get rid of the leftover pain from vomiting, and tried to let the tension go.

Week 10, he remembered, as he watched his alarm clock tick over to 4AM. (Closer to dawn than to midnight, now. He might just have to give up and just push through on the sleep he'd gotten already.) It was turning out worse than week nine, but better than week eight. The nightmares had changed from vague, unsettling images to full-on memories, perverted by his anxiety and made macabre.

The worst thing was that it wasn't even his own fear his brain was manifesting. It was his dad's, and Scott's, and the rest of the pack's. They'd never admit it to his face, but they all had a low-grade worry that Peter would snap one day and go back to his more murder-y self. And of course, if he did that, Stiles would be the first person he'd bump off because that made any sense at all, right? It wasn't like Peter had had an objective (however misguided) in mind the last time he'd killed anyone. That would be way too logical for a psychopath.

Stiles had never worried that Peter would change his mind one day and decide that they weren't equals and grossly, bizarrely perfect for each other. He worried plenty about lots of things, but never that, So his subconscious was really just a giant asshole to keep waking him up like this every other night, or sometimes more.

They definitely weren't any kind of manufactured dream, planted in his head by a spell or a certain werewolf who was due to come back from the dead any day now. He'd checked, and run a bunch of different tests Deaton had given him, and they were just regular dreams.

When the morning came, he'd mark off another day in his mental calendar and shake it off, optimistically hoping for a better sleep the next night. _Won't be long now_ , he thought, and he followed the pull of exhausted sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter...later today, Nov 4.


	5. Chapter 5

"Is she new?"

Stiles frowned. "What?"

His dad jerked his chin across the crowded restaurant toward their waitress, who was at the cash register printing the bill for their lunch.

Stiles shook his head. "Maybe, I don't know."

"She was giving you quite the look."

Stiles' fork scraped shrilly on his pie plate. "Huh?"

His dad leaned back in his chair and gave him a calm, questioning look. "You think she might be interested?"

Stiles' grip tightened on his fork. He'd thought they'd moved past his dad's need to try and bolster his confidence back in freshman year of high school. It had taken a lot of convincing for his dad to get that low self-esteem wasn't the reason why he didn't have a girlfriend. (Or a boyfriend, which he didn't confess until much later.) He'd known he wasn't the worst-looking person in his year, and he could've had his pick from the other rejects, the ones who were desperate for someone's approval and the bolstering of social status that came from being paired up and pinned with a Went To Second Base With a Living Person Badge. He just had exacting standards.

He chanced a look at the waitress. She was wearing the restaurant's standard black clothes, which were starting to turn grey from too many washes. Her service had been a bit of a blur, but Stiles remembered that she'd written everything down accurately, brought their meals as quickly as the kitchen could make them, and had remembered every one of his dad's little pots of sauces he employed to try and make his chicken and steamed veggies less virtuous. None of those things suggested that she was a new employee, and his dad, the sheriff of a town with a crime rate disproportionate to its population, should have been able to figure that out. Which meant that his dad wasn't just making conversation, or noticing a special kind of interest that Stiles had blinded himself to.

"I couldn't tell," Stiles said diplomatically. He almost left it at that, but he saw his dad open his mouth to make another observation he didn't care to hear. "It doesn't matter, anyway Regardless of whether or not she wants to make a move, I'm not going to take advantage of it. You know that."

His dad didn't sigh, but his shoulders fell a centimetre. A tiny amount that would have been easy to miss if Stiles hadn't been expecting a talk like this for about a week now, and hadn't been expecting it to go just as badly as it was about to.

"Son." His dad laid his wrists on the tabletop, his hands outstretched in a kind and encouraging sort of curve of his fingers.  "I know it's only been six months--"

"Five." His dad blinked at the interruption. "It's been five months." And one week, he didn't say.

"Exactly. It hasn't been a long time." The Sheriff took a full, slow breath before he spoke, with great care. "But I think it'd be good for you to maybe...take someone out sometime. Nothing serious, of course. I get that you don't want to jump into anything so soon after."

After. _After_. Like his life could be separated into two neat sections: Peter. Post-Peter. Stiles almost laughed, because he supposed it sort of could, but in a different way than his dad was probably picturing. His life could probably be bisected into: Before dragging his best friend out into the woods to get bitten by an omega-turned-alpha (too quick a transition, far too quick) in a spiral of blood-frenzy. Then, after.

"I don't want you to end up like me," his dad continued. "I waited a decade after your mother passed to even look at another person, even though I knew she wouldn't have wanted that. You have to live for yourself while you're still living. You owe it to--to Peter."

Stiles gut twisted with bitter humour. Even all these years, the Sheriff still couldn't say Peter's name without stumbling. They'd had his grudging blessing, strictly because he hadn't wanted to lose his son, but they'd never had his ringing endorsement. Stiles used to worry, late at night, that Peter himself wasn't the problem. He used to ask himself if his dad would've stumbled over Tom, Dick, or Harry, simply because none of them were Jane, Mary, or Lydia. But time would have fixed even that problem eventually, as his dad became resigned, so it wasn't about the fact that Peter was a man. (Or that he still saw Stiles as a boy when they got together.)

It was about trust, which Stiles had never regained after the lies upon lies he'd told to keep his dad in the dark. (All for nothing, anyway.) They were past any real blame, but there was still a distance they didn't have when his mom was alive or in the years after when they'd leaned on each other as their only support.

It was the same distance that lived between Stiles and his pack. He called them his friends, he would jump into the line of fire for any of them--Except maybe Isaac, depending on his mood--but he was still an orbiting moon around their planet. Part of the same solar system, but somehow separate. He didn't even know anymore if it was by his choice or theirs, but it was okay, because Peter had been in orbit with him, so he was never lonely, though he was often alone, doing research, recon, strategy. Building their escape routes for when the inevitable apocalypse came.

Stiles wanted to scream, _I'm not you. Peter isn't your wife, because she's gone, and Peter is only...missing_. But he didn't, because there wasn't anything he could say to convince his father that Peter would come back, just like there was nothing he could say to Lydia or Scott. He'd exhausted himself trying already, and that was before sleep had started being so difficult a state to achieve. Instead, he gripped his fork tighter and hummed noncommittally and stabbed it into the fluffy meringue on his mostly untouched key lime pie. He gripped it hard enough for it to bite back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter on Nov 6. We're at the halfway point now! Stiles continues to unravel. :(


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles trudged up the stairs to his apartment, his heavy steps echoing off the concrete walls. Work had been fine, slow, but there was enough backlogged work to keep him busy. Then, his boss had called him into her office, and the afternoon had gone downhill from there.

A few of his co-workers were "concerned" about him, and wanted him to know that if he needed help, he could ask for it. On one level, he could see their point. His lunch didn't take up as much room in the breakroom fridge as it used to, and his inherited tendency toward dark under-eyes was making it difficult to hide how much sleep he wasn't getting. He smiled as much as he could, but since he started living with the chronic pain of missing Peter and the never-ending anticipation and worry, he found it more difficult to be the joker around the library. They'd noticed the change in him, and could he blame them for commenting on it?

On another level, it was hard _not_ to blame them. How fucking patronizing it was, tattling to a supervisor that he was looking like shit, and he should do something about it. He got his work done on time, he smiled at the customers coming in the door, and helped them do their research papers, and found their books that weren't actually lost, they were just shelved in the nonfiction section, because it was a history textbook, not a fucking romance novel.

He was fine. He was dealing with it, meditating every day to try to bring his low-level anxiety down. If he didn't get any better sleep this week, he was going to break out the pills, even though he hated the chemical-hazed sleep they brought. So what if his belt was a notch or two tighter? He ate, he took a multivitamin. He'd also gotten acclimated enough to the harrowing dreams of Peter killing him or coming back wrong and rotted. He'd learned how not to throw up every time they came.

So what right did they have to check up on him, like he was on probation? He'd spent the early afternoon vacillating wildly between righteously pissed off and worried that everyone thought he was a lazy, inefficient crybaby, then decided to take his boss up on her suggestion that he go home early. He loved his job and liked most of the people he worked with, usually. He knew he was being irrational, but he might have to call in sick the next day, give himself some time to get his head on straight. It would also serve the other purpose of shutting the busybodies up for a while, since they'd think he was taking a break because of the treatment they'd given him, or they'd think he was finally taking care of himself, and their work was done.

Once the idea came into his head that he might have an unexpected day off, his mood lightened, and he started planning all the things he might do with all that free time. It lasted all the way until he reached his door, and pressed the first number on the keypad, and it didn't make the friendly _beep_ it usually did. His stomach dropped away and skin went hot, then cold, when he saw that the door was unlatched just the slightest bit. Enough that the door looked shut to any passersby, but the lock hadn't engaged.

He hadn't left it that way, he was absolutely sure. He had a routine, and he stuck to it, and pulling the door closed with a brisk _snap_ was something he did every single time he left the apartment, even if only to get the mail from outside. Someone had opened it, and whoever it was had to have typed in the code, or found some other way to override it because it hadn't been forced open. He would have gotten a call from the security company if it had, so this must be something worse than a simple break and enter to scoop their valuables.

Reaching into his messenger bag, he wrapped his hand around his taser and pulled it out. Quietly, he used it to poke the door gently enough that it unlatched and swung noiselessly inward. He held it out in front of him as he entered, his heart pumping wildly, feeling like he was living a procedural crime show. There was no one in the entry way, or in the living room, which was visible from the door. He took a cautious few steps into the room and cleared the kitchen as well.

It was a small place, with few windows, since both he and Peter were paranoid enough to want to limit the number of ways people could breach their inner sanctum. They also didn't want to live completely without sunlight, so they'd compromised with themselves and put in three tall panels of windows on one side of the living room, reinforced with sensors, bulletproof glass and blackout curtains for when they weren't there to watch them. From where he stood, they didn't look like they'd been tampered with, and the line of salt on the sill was completely undisturbed, so it was unlikely that anyone had come or gone through them.

Stiles reasoned that whoever had broken in would probably have closed the door behind them if they'd already left. It didn't make sense that they'd leave evidence of a break in if they didn't have to. So that meant that, if the windows hadn't been used as a quick escape route when Stiles got home just now, the intruder was probably in the hall, the guest bathroom or the bedroom.

With a silent, bracing breath, Stiles continued his sneaking way closer to the end of the hallway, listening for voices or sounds of a robbery in progress. He didn't know what that would sound like, but he thought he would recognize it when he heard it. He whipped around the corner to look down the long hallway as fast as he could, but no one was standing on the other side waiting to bash his brains in. He held his breath and listened again.

Up until then, with every room he cleared, he'd felt a surge of relief, but now, his anxiety just ratcheted higher. Only two rooms left--actually, just one. The bedroom door was standing open, and he was sure he'd closed it that morning.

He gripped his taser tighter and crept the final 10 feet to the bedroom, straining his ears for anything. This close, he could hear that he'd been right to worry because there were noises coming from the open door. No voices, just sounds of things being moved. He steeled himself--whatever it was, he'd probably faced far worse--then lunged into the open doorway, his weapon raised, finger on the trigger and poised to press down.

Scott and Derek were standing in his bedroom, staring him down with guilty, frozen faces. On Stiles' bed were cardboard boxes, half full with things he had trouble seeing, but identified pretty damn quick.

They were Peter's things. His clothes. His gym stuff. His stupid bamboo pillow that he bought for way too much money, then refused to use except for when his back hurt, which was like, once a year.

"What are you doing?" Stiles croaked.

"Stiles. You're home early." Scott sounded like he was talking someone off a ledge. "We wanted to--" He swallowed and looked at Derek for support, but received only a blank expression. "We thought we'd be done by the time you got here."

"Then what?" Stiles made his voice snap like a whip, and he enjoyed the flinch it brought in both of them. "You'd try to convince me that someone just broke in and only took the things they thought would fit them? Oh, how lucky, Peter is just their size."

"No, I thought--"

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?"

He didn't yell. The time for screaming and railing like a child annoyed at the injustice of the world had passed. This time, he was in the right. There was no justification that he could fathom to excuse his best friend, and a man to whom he should be considered family, for breaking into his goddamned house.

Derek seemed to understand this. He didn't try to look ashamed or sorry, he simply stepped away from the boxes and crossed his arms, looking down at the floor. Scott, however, dug his heels in, and Stiles watched as his shoulders drew up and his head lowered into the familiar stubborn posture he always went back to when he knew he was wrong but didn't want to admit it.

"We didn't mean any harm by it," Scott insisted. "It's just that you don't talk to me anymore. You barely talk to your dad, either and we're both worried about you. We want you to be okay again, and I thought this might be the only way for me to help you do that."

"This being breaking and entering? Taking things from my home? Yeah, very helpful, Scott, you asshole."

Scott was nothing if not determined. "It's not healthy to keep this stuff around. You've told me that Peter is coming back, I get why you think that, and I wish it were true. But it's been over six months with no sign of him." Scott tried to reach out a hand to offer comfort, but Stiles flinched away. "You have to accept that he's gone, and live your life. You need to move on."

Stiles had forgotten, up until that point, that he still had his taser in his hand, poised and ready to be used. Taking as deep a breath as he dared--too deep and his anger might burst like a bubble of noxious gas--he moved his finger away from the trigger. His rage was incandescent, and it would be far too easy to hurt as he was hurting, but then he would end up feeling guilty later. Guilt was tiresome, and it served no purpose. This, Stiles had learned from Peter, who knew about these things. Few people in their pack were completely free from guilt, deserved or not, but only Peter had truly become free of his. Stiles had been nearly there, but he felt like he'd backslid. He definitely didn't need yet another vicious demon to beat back in his low moments.

"Even if he was--" Stiles choked, cursing his tightening throat, "--gone forever. You think this is the best way to help me move on? Breaking into my apartment and stealing my shit? Ripping the carpet out from underneath me? This isn't an intervention reality show, Scott, this is my life. These are my things. You can't just come in and take them."

Scott and Derek could probably smell how much of Stiles was on the clothes they'd taken from the drawers. Stiles had started needing the comforting scent of Peter's cologne to start the day, or to get him to sleep. He felt pathetic as he did it, sniffing a shirt Peter had worn once then put back in the bureau because it was still clean. He never thought he'd be that kind of person, who used physical objects to bring back the memories of a person who was absent. He hadn't understood why his dad had kept his mother's side of the bedroom pristine for years after she'd gone to the hospital and not come back. When he was young, he'd been sure that it would hurt more than help to see her things laid out, because they were reminders of the fact that she was gone.

But then, he supposed he still couldn't understand it, because as much as holding Peter's shirts to his chest made him miss being held to Peter's chest with a visceral, tangible ache, it was different for him than it was for his dad. His mom's things were a shrine to her death. Peter's stuff, all of it, was just waiting for him to come back. Six months was a long time, but Stiles could be patient. And Peter could be persistent. Peter would never let a little thing like death keep him away for too long.

Would he?

Stiles shook his head, waving that bullshit away. Scott looked frozen and frustrated, unable to think of a way to say "you're delusional and desperate" without it being insulting. Derek said nothing, still. He seemed a little reluctant about the whole thing, and Stiles thought it was possible that Scott had only barely convinced him to come on this fool's mission for backup, just in case. How Scott thought it would end well was beyond Stiles.

Stiles frowned, his hand squeezing the taser again.  "How did you even get in here?" He asked, slowly, dread and realization hitting him at once. "I have an alarm, there's mountain ash--"

The ensuite door opened just as Stiles worked it out. They needed a human, one who could handle themselves, and maybe keep them safe, if the apartment had turned out to be more hazardous than it had been. Lydia would have been the perfect good luck charm if Peter and Stiles had bothered to ward the place better than they had. He was only now regretting that they'd decided that that kind of long-term defensive magic took too much time and effort to maintain.

Her face was a mask of haughty boredom, her default when she didn't want to show what she was actually feeling. But her fingers were tight around the collection of bottles and tubes she carried, and she wouldn't meet his eyes, so he knew she felt bad about being here, helping Scott remove all the traces of Peter from his life.

Good. He wanted her to lose sleep over it.

Like Derek, Lydia was smart and didn't jump to her own defense. She crossed the room and dumped her armful of Peter's beloved grooming products into an empty box, then crossed her arms, defiant but stalled now that she'd been caught. As soon as she'd stepped away, he picked up the box and held it protectively to his chest, his moments jerky and awkward with the seething betrayal in his veins.

He would have expected this from Scott, or Derek, or even his dad, who liked to steamroll people into pleasing shapes before they even realized he'd started his engine. But not Lydia. He'd known she thought he was wrong about Peter, and that she pitied him for waiting for him, but he could never have predicted that she'd agree to one of Scott's worst plans to date. She must be pretty desperate, he realized, and more worried about him than he thought, but that didn't make it okay for her to try and take the things that Stiles had left of Peter--

Until Peter came back.

"You should go," Stiles said, ice forming in the pit of his stomach. "You should go now."

"Bro--"

"Do not pull that shit with me, Scott."

He was done. Absolutely finished with people trying to help him by fucking up his life and taking away his choices. No amount of brotherhood was going to make him fit for human company at that moment.

"Go away, and don't call me. For a long time."

Scott had the balls to look surprised, and even a little bit hurt. "I just wanted--"

"I don't care what you wanted. What you did was try to fuck me over, and you've only managed to fuck up our friendship. _Bro_ _._ "

Scott's lips firmed and his tense, stubborn shoulders finally slumped in defeat. He looked like he was lost, adrift in the barely familiar apartment of his most familiar friend, but eventually he walked to the bedroom door, and was almost through it before he turned around to give his final, resonating anti-hero one liner.

"I'll be here for you, you know. When you realize--"

"He is coming back, Scott." Stiles spat. "And when he does, you _won't_ have to run long and hard to get away from him. He'll be right here, and he won't even touch you because he's not the animal you think he is--"

"You're an idiot if you think he's planning on coming back."

Derek had been silent so long that Stiles had almost forgotten that he was there, and was stunned into speechlessness.

"Peter promised me that the next time he died, he'd stay dead," Derek continued, staring Stiles down with his deep, world-weary eyes. "He said it was more trouble than it was worth. The pain, the power it took. He said it would be easier just to let go."

The ice in Stiles' stomach shuddered and clenched. Stiles remembered the dreams Peter would wake screaming from. Most of them were about the fire, about being abandoned while the damaged layers of his skin were still burning off, then waking up already a killer and in too deep to stop. But sometimes, the dreams seemed different. Quieter, but more terrifying in the way that Peter sank into silent despair the moment he woke up. Stiles had never asked because he knew firsthand that some dreams were too cruel to recount to anyone else. But now, he wondered. Were those dreams about the void Peter went to when he'd died the first time? And if they were...

"He told you that, did he?" Stiles flashed a tight, fine-pointed smile. "Yeah, and he's never lied to your face before. Never manipulated you for his gain because you were too stupid and naive to see through an obvious trick. Right?"

The venom poured from his mouth and into Derek's ear before Stiles could even think about stopping it, but he probably wouldn't even if he could. There was no filter anymore, it'd been burned away as soon as they'd passed the threshold into his and Peter's safe haven.

"He may have made promises to you, Derek. But I'm willing to bet that was before me. Before _me and him_. Because whatever vows he made, he would break in an instant if it meant he could come back to me. His family." Derek winced, and Stiles' belly squirmed with shameful pleasure. "Now get out."

"Stiles--" Lydia tried.

"Get. Out."

Stiles let his spark ignite and bring to life the mountain ash that was laid in the base of all the walls, the only magical protection they'd bothered with, because it was dormant and waiting for his command. It didn't hurt them, but both Scott and Derek could feel its stifling cage around them, and their wolves shrank away from it. They were out the door and walking away in seconds, and Lydia followed them without a backward glance to Stiles.  

The door shut and the alarm system beeped to engage. Stiles stumbled on shaky legs to the bed, which was still piled with boxes, but big enough that he could push them aside to make a space for himself and collapse on it. He'd have to change the door code, he realized. The system was still functional, which meant that Lydia must have gotten the password from the only place he had it stored: His phone, which also had a password, but one that wasn't as complicated, because he was still sentimental--010911. January 9th, 2011. The day everything started.

Peter would probably give him one hell of a bitch face when he found out Stiles had written the code somewhere, but Stiles hadn't really had much choice. He was so tired all the time, he was forgetful. And they'd only just changed the code a few weeks before Peter had been buried, so it wasn't his fault he hadn't committed it to long term memory before sleep deprivation had turned his brain into a sieve.

He hated the idea of programming a new code, because how would Peter get into the apartment when he got back? He hated the image of Peter, cold and confused, and newly reborn, waiting at his own front door like a stray dog until Stiles came home from work. Stiles shuddered, and his teeth started chattering from a combination of leftover adrenaline and his body's shitty temperature regulation abilities when he wasn't well rested. His muscles were sore and noodly in a way they weren't usually, even with how few REM cycles he was getting, because while he could activate a little mountain ash, and make a bit of a show for their enemies, his spark wasn't powerful enough to sustain anything impressive, and he was always drained after he used it too much.

He was out of practice, and he cursed the useless puff of magic he had. He was useful in other ways, Peter always told him, then usually proceeded to show him how useful he was, but Peter wasn't there.

Stiles let out a sobbing breath. He upended the nearest box and gathered its contents--soft cotton shirts--into his arms, then closed his eyes and willed sleep to come.

He'd almost nodded off, easier than he'd experienced in weeks, when a thought made his eyes spring back open.

He'd come home and seen the door open, without any signs of breaking and entering. He'd been confident in the security system's ability to keep thieves and bad people out. So why, even though all signs had pointed to the possibility, did he not for one second think that it was Peter on the other side of the bedroom door?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to stress that Scott et al aren't the villains here. They were there for Stiles if he'd wanted them, and in any other situation where a loved one died, it would have been unhealthy to keep hoping they'd turn up again. Scott might have been very ham-handed, but his intentions were good. Stiles just couldn't take the helping hand. 
> 
> January 9, 2011 is the date the events of the first episode happen, according to [this timeline](http://www.teenwolfwiki.com/Timeline).
> 
> Next chapter tomorrow, because it'll be a shorter one.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles' ceiling didn't have any tiles to count, which was probably a good thing. The view was boring, so his brain didn't have any extra reason to refuse to shut off, other than the usual. He looked up at it anyway, because there wasn't much else for him to do. He'd banned himself from using his phone after he turned the lights out, since he'd read that could mess up sleep cycles. Not that his sleeping pattern was a 'cycle' so much as a roller coaster ride that changed every single night, and got more and more tiresome as the nights went on. He'd never bought a season pass to that theme park, and he wanted off. 

He'd been having a pretty good month, until this week. His insomnia came in waves, he'd found out, which was a blessing in disguise. It was shitty when he was on the downswing, but at least he hadn't been sleeping only two hours a night for the past eight months. 

What Stiles really needed to do was just...sleep. Five hours, just five whole hours of uninterrupted sleep would would set him up nicely for the next day. But that was the whole problem, right there.  _ Uninterrupted _ . He might be able to fall unconscious, but staying that way was the hard part. 

He shifted, rolling on his side and flipping the pillow over to the cool side. He shut his eyes and tried some deep breathing. It didn't do fuck all. His mind just wouldn't shut off, and he kept thinking about his grocery list, or the dishes he'd left in the sink, and the new Netflix show he saw a trailer for. Stupid, boring stuff that could definitely wait until morning. He tried counting backward and forward. His limbs were heavy, and his eyes felt like sandpaper, but they were closing, and the only thing he was aware of was the flickering of flames on the other side of his eyelids--

His whole body lurched and he scrambled over the sheets to the lamp, turning it on and blinking in the yellow light. Groaning, he flopped onto his stomach and gave up on any attempt at trying to get comfortable. His heart was beating in his throat and his skin was tensing from the change in temperature from warm and cozy to bare and crawling. 

Here was another problem Stiles had with sleeping. He wasn't sure he even wanted to close his eyes, because the nightmares would come back, and he'd be tossed back in that sea of vipers and spit out a little while later, raw and chewed on, and debating what was worse: the deprivation or the terrors. 

Still, he tried, for a lot of reasons, not least of all because his boss was making noises about him taking a sabbatical to deal with his "issues at home." Like she knew anything about his home life. One reason why he continued to give it a college try was one he'd never tell his therapist. (If he had a therapist. He hadn't needed one in years, because Peter was there to hear him out, tell him when he was being irrational, or tell him that whatever it was wasn't his fault, that he was a good person, he wasn't a killer. Stiles could barely remember not feeling like a killer.)

He had a love/hate relationship with the dreams. He hated that they ended, and that they always ended with fire or blood or electricity, and always, always painful death. But he loved the way they started. Peter would be with him, acting out a routine they'd gone through a hundred times, like coming to bed, or sitting together at breakfast. Or on the couch with him, Peter holding him and talking about nothing while Stiles came down from a manic upswing, or up from a depressive episode. 

It would get perverted somehow, and he was lucid enough during these dreams that he could tell when it happened, but he couldn't wake himself up. The worst part, though, was that he wasn't sure he even would, if he was able. Peter's absence was a physical ache most days that eased just a bit when Stiles dreamed of Peter's hands running over his back, curling possessively around the nape of his neck, like he used to.

His horror at the way the dreams ended was real, but he felt like a bit of a fraud, or like he didn't qualify for the nausea and tremors he'd feel after he woke up. He knew that was stupid, but he also knew that he felt like a little kid getting ready to run into his parent's room.  _ Mommy, Mommy, I dreamed that the love of my life brutally murdered everyone else I ever cared about. _

Last night, he dreamed that Peter systematically killed the whole pack. His dad, Lydia, Derek, all gone. But before that, Peter had whispered biting and funny comments into Stiles' ear and smiled his cool, cutting smile that had always done things to Stiles, even when he was too young to know what he wanted from a lover wasn't perfection, but completion. Peter completed Stiles, even when Stiles was dreaming, right up until the moment he picked up a knife from the picnic table and drew it across Scott's throat, quick enough to kill even an alpha.

Maybe even during the carnage, too.  

Stiles curled up fetal in the middle of the bed, feeling the wrongness in his soul getting bigger and darker. Peter needed to come home soon and beat back the wrongness, or Stiles didn't know…

He didn't know how long he could last. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one today, but good news, edits are getting there. Updates will be every other day until Sunday. (Nov 9, 11, 13)


	8. Chapter 8

On all the paperwork, it said Stiles had been laid off due to lack of work. It made sense, since he was one of the newest employees, and people always assumed that libraries were dying out. This way, he could collect on unemployment while he was gone and when he was ready, the library would magically have something to pay him for again. No fuss, no muss.

He wouldn't have to have it spread around the office that his direct supervisor had told him she was worried he was in the midst of a mental breakdown, and that he needed help. Juicy stories like that traveled fast around the staff room, but his boss was one of the more circumspect employees. She wouldn't let anything slip that wasn't on the official paperwork.

All Stiles had to worry about was the people who were there when he'd lost it while he was shelving on Wednesday afternoon. He'd seen the retreating back of a man, and the cut of his jacket and the span of his shoulders, even the colour of his hair had seemed so familiar that he'd run after him.

The stranger had looked scared of Stiles when he finally caught up to him, but later, Stiles could see why. He'd grabbed the guy's shoulder with such force it might be bruised, and he must have had a wild and desperate look on his face. He still felt wild and desperate. The man hadn't been Peter, and that meant Peter was still not alive, so Stiles lost it just a little bit. When he'd let go, the stranger backed away, muttering about crazy kids--never mind that Stiles was closer to 30 than he was to 20--and Stiles had sunk down into a crouch, breathing fast and clutching at the sick feeling below his sternum.

He felt like he'd had whiplash for almost a year. Every time he woke up, or opened his front door or turned the corner to drive down his street, he couldn't stop himself from expecting--or hoping, praying, pleading--to see Peter. And every time he wasn't there, the disappointment was just as crushing as it was the first time. It was exhausting.

So Stiles didn't argue, even though he needed his job to keep him sane--or as close to sane as he could get, which was further away than it had been last year. He packed up his things from the cupboard he'd claimed a corner in, and left the library on a Monday with no idea what he was going to do the next day. His co-workers smiled warily at him as he left, and he did his best, but he doubted that he looked happy. He can't remember the last time he was happy.

Actually, he can. Peter had been trying to read his book in the living room the Tuesday before he;d died, and Stiles was annoying him--putting cold feet under Peter's thighs, throwing pieces of paper at him, asking him stupid questions about what he was reading. Just being a nuisance, because he couldn't stand being bored, but he was too tired to stick to one thing to keep himself occupied. Peter came over to his end of the couch and sat on him, calmly turning the page of his book while Stiles shrieked and cackled under his weight. Peter soon got bored of the book (Stiles had a suspicion he'd been bored of it long before that. He wouldn't have been so easily distracted by Stiles otherwise.) and pressed Stiles into the couch for a different reason, but before all that, Stiles could remember thinking to himself _this is the best. This is the life I was supposed to have, grappling with someone who can take it and dish it right back out._

On the way home in his car, Stiles saw no less than three people who looked just enough like Peter to trick his brain for a second. He didn't know how he made it home safely, but he managed to pull into his spot in one piece, and he promised himself--and his dad, who he hadn't spoken to in weeks because the phone was too heavy to pick up--that he'd give driving a pass for a while. It wasn't like he had anywhere special to go, now that work wasn't an option. He didn't have a bustling social life.

He was still mad at Scott. And Derek and Lydia, to a certain degree, but Scott was alpha, and he was more a leader now than ever. Scott still texted him every time there was a pack meeting, and included him in group chats about how best to deal with some problem or other, but he never responded. He didn't block the number either, he just silently seethed whenever he got a notification, which probably said something about his tendency toward passive aggression.

After he shut the door behind him, he went over to the bookshelves, trailing his fingers along the spines and the occasional statue he shoved on there because Peter didn't like "clutter," i.e. _literally anything_ on surfaces, so it annoyed him. Stiles' action figures ended up there, when he came up with some bullshit excuse to keep them there instead of at his dad's, where he was technically living at the time, along with a squat stone gargoyle Stiles had seen at a garage sale that had a smirk just like Peter's.

His hand paused over a battered paperback. It was the book Peter was reading that Tuesday, finished--or abandoned, he couldn't remember--and neatly returned to the shelf. He stroked his fingers down the cracked spine, felt the fuzzy white edges where the cover was nearly torn off at the corner, but he didn't pluck it out and open it. He continued on, and farther on the shelf was a grimoire. It was old, full of odd, slightly dubious spells that were beyond Peter or Stiles' capabilities, but interesting reading.

Or at least, that was the lie they'd always told each other.

***

Nights were the worst, Stiles thought, but it seemed a very far off observation. Shadows were longer and they looked more like people--person--the longer he stared. Time slowed, five minutes seemed to take an hour, even when Stiles sat staring at the clock, trying to count to 60, but he'd get distracted every time, lose his place, and he couldn't start again, so his only option was to stare until the digit clicked over, and it took _so_ _long_. Those red glowing letters were wretched, stubborn things.

He knew how to tell when he was dreaming, and checked compulsively, but the time between midnight and dawn always seemed to be a dreamlike world. He felt a little bit inhuman, perched on the edge of his bed, counting his fingers, hunched like the little gargoyle statue on the bookshelf. He'd catch himself rocking back and forth, or pulling the hair behind his ear until his scalp was raw.

The silence was tense, heavy and cold, and the longer he sat uncovered, the faster the chills and goosebumps ran up his skin, but he couldn't lie down, couldn't try to sleep, again, fail, _again_. When the sky outside the tiny window in the bedroom--the one compromise Peter had made, because Stiles had to be able to see that morning was coming, or he wouldn't sleep at all--lightened, and the shivery, unsettled feeling he hated and craved started to burn itself out, he might lay his head down.

He used to have to try and force himself to try and sleep at a time approaching something normal, but he didn't have work to get to now, so there wasn't much point. He'd sleep when he was tired, or when he could close his eyes and not see Peter's guts torn into, his eyes glassy with pain...the last time he'd seen Peter alive.

Stiles' whole body jerked like he was waking up from a dream, and he leapt up, pacing the floor beside the bed. The carpet made a satisfying hiss with each shuffling step, and he could feel the static buzzing in the soles of his feet. He imagined that he could build up a strong enough charge to send someone flying across the room with the touch of his finger. He smiled at the thought of the mild electricity powering up his weak spark.

He stopped, and the sound of his shuffling feet echoed, but only in his head. He gripped the carpet between his toes, squeezed it into bunches, then let go. Keeping his heels in one place, he swivelled toward the bed, then broke the connection, and walked over to it, and to the book he'd placed on Peter's side. The spell book Peter had said was beyond them both.

He wasn't a druid. Or a wizard, or a warlock, or whatever. He couldn't wield magic like Deaton could, probably because he couldn't be impartial like Deaton, or Morrell, or any of the magic users he'd met. He was too vindictive, too selfish to be given that power, and his magic had known that, and stunted it's own growth. Good thing, too, because while Stiles could claim to want to do the right thing, like Scott, but if there was a spell that could save someone he loved at the expense of some stranger, he would probably do it without a second thought. It was completely fucked up, but it was the truth. It was why Derek was Scott's official second, despite how many times he'd screwed up, and Stiles still only had the title of best friend.

Well, that reason, and that he'd fallen in love with a werewolf with blue eyes and a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska.

He opened the book anyway, and paged through it to see if it was organized in any way. It wasn't. Too much to ask for 19th century mages to stick to alphabetical order, he supposed. It was sort of a textbook, he realized. He'd only ever gotten as far as the table of contents before getting freaked out about ruining it by getting ketchup on the brittle pages, or something. Peter would probably forgive him, but he'd get the silent treatment for a week if he messed up such an expensive book, so he hadn't bothered. Peter had read snatches of spells out to him a few times, but mostly just the ingredient lists with their bizarre requirements, or hilariously specific instructions.

Some student of magic generations ago had copied down his teachers' lectures word for word, in cramped, messy writing, then written in the margins with comments and elaborations. What a nerd. It was helpful for Stiles, though, since he needed all the help he could get in understanding all the fiddly details of spellwork. He could figure it out in a pinch, and had had to before, but he left those sorts of things to Lydia and Deaton now, mostly.

Beacon Hills wasn't quite the hell mouth as it had been when Stiles was in high school, but they were never completely safe, and were always on their guard, preparing to be attacked any minute. They worked better as a pack, now that Scott had gotten over himself and learned to delegate. So Stiles abandoned studying magic beyond what useful parlour tricks he could manage, and switched to being the strategy man. Or one of them. Peter was the other, and they worked well together. Not that the pack had ever acknowledged all the ideas that Peter had come up with to save their asses. He'd been the one to come up with the idea of playing predatory bird noises on a loudspeaker during the battle with the harpies, to throw them off their guard and get them grounded long enough that they could be dealt with on an even playing field.

Fat lot of good that had done him.

Stiles' fingers creaked on the delicate edges of the book, and he let it go so he didn't ruin it. It fell open on the bed, to a page with a drawing of a foot that looked like it'd seen better days. Some kind of pus draining spell that didn't bear thinking about for too long. Realizing he was freezing cold and hadn't noticed, Stiles climbed into the bed and dragged the book up to the pillow, propping it open and paging through it, hoping the boring ingredient lists and step-by-step instructions would help him get to sleep.

Most of the spells, though, did a lot more interesting stuff than drainage. Some pretty messed up stuff, too, which made Stiles think that, despite the student's diligence, it might not have been the most respected school. Kind of like the shady community college equivalent for magic, he supposed.

He felt calmer as he paged past descriptions of offensive spells, curses, and jinxes. The shivery feeling had gotten better, a sheet was keeping him warm and he no longer felt like the only person left alive post-apocalypse. He told himself as he speed-read the book that he wasn't looking for anything in particular, just something to pass the time, but lying was difficult when there was no one but shadows to lie to.

He found the spell he wanted about three quarters of the way through the book, after a series of very helpful anti-inflammatory charms. On these pages, the margins were bare, and nothing was underlined or circled for further study. It was simply laid out in black and white, ink and parchment. It seemed the diligent student also had a healthy disgust of spells that crossed the line into dark magic.

The diagrams were gruesome, even worse than the foot in need of drainage. Spindly, crooked limbs reached out of a deep grave, and hastily drawn bystanders looked horrified at exposed organs and dripping blood. The resurrection spell was long, complicated, and it required far more firepower than Stiles had to work with. That didn't stop him from reading it from start to finish five times, as if on the next time through, it would suddenly be easy, with no risk to himself and a far better outcome than a soulless, half-alive copy of the person who'd gone into the ground.

When his eyes could no longer focus on the letters, he let the book fall shut. The scent of the brittle parchment wafted toward him, and he breathed it in, trying to grasp the comfort he used to get from an old book well read. He didn't feel anything. He couldn't feel a damned thing anymore, except desperation.

He remembered feeling hopeful, months ago. Even though it had hurt to be so alone while surrounded by pack to lean on, he'd had hope, and he'd been calm in the knowledge that Peter would come back, that all he had to do was sit and wait, even though it killed him a little every day. He didn't know when he'd lost that hope. At some point, he'd stopped believing and starting desperately pleading, but hopeful was something he wasn't.

He traced the edge of the book with a boney finger. He wasn't stupid, or reckless. He knew that resurrection spells didn't work, or if they did, they didn't reanimate a dead person into anything close to what they'd been before.

He wasn't stupid, but he was starting to feel like he might be losing his grip on the part of his sane mind that could imagine living in a world where Peter wasn't by his side.

"Where the hell are you, Peter?" Stiles whispered to the book, and to the long, claustrophobic night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter won't do much to ease the pain of the US election. But at least it'll be distracting for a few minutes. I'll be up here in Canada cowering and thanking every deity I don't believe in for my young, hip Prime Minister who has a fundamental understanding of basic human rights. 
> 
> Next chapter Nov 11.


	9. Chapter 9

It was getting darker by the second, still just enough to see by, but Stiles tripped over a root or a patch of uneven ground every other minute. He didn't stop, didn't slow down, just kept his eyes on the trees ahead, minding the twists and turns. He'd left the path ages ago. He wasn't even sure anymore if he was heading in the right direction, but he kept going anyway.

The trees whipped past. He could hear the rasping of his wet, laboured breath as he ran, over the buzz and twirr of the forest's night creatures. He tasted iron in his throat, but he kept going, couldn't pause for even a second to look around, get his heaving lungs under control.

 _Keep moving. Keep moving. Run faster until you're there._ Sweat was dripping into his eyes, stinging and blinding. More trees, more rough ground. The light was almost gone now, it had been more night than day when he'd left the safety of home. But home was hell, now, where it had once been heaven.

 _Keep moving. Don't stop, find him,_ **_find him._ **

The trees broke, and so did Stiles' stride because he tripped and actually fell this time. He slammed into the ground and knocked the air he had left out of his lungs. He lay, gasping like a fish, taut as a wire from the pounding ache of cold bones smashed into colder ground. He didn't know how long he stayed there, but later, he'd wonder if he lost consciousness. He hadn't hit his head, but he'd hit everything else, and he'd have the bruises to prove it.

His head was a bit clearer, though, after an interminable time, so he tested each joint and stood up carefully, creaking and sore like an old man. He limped a few steps, unable to even tell which side he should favour because he hurt all over. Nothing was sprained or broken, but he felt like one giant wound. He could taste blood on his lip where his teeth had nearly bitten right through.

He sniffed, wiped dirt, blood, and sweat from his face, and took a few more faltering steps forward. He might have knocked a little more sense into himself, but the reckless drive that had led him out here in the first place was still there. _Keep moving. Find him. Be with him, or you'll lose it completely_ _._ So he didn't stop, he just shuffled along awkwardly, wincing.

It was only when he looked up to see how far away the treeline was that he realized he didn't need to keep going. He was there. He let out a choked sob of relief and shambled the last few feet to the grave. His legs gave out when he was in front of the cold stone and he hissed as skinned knees hit the ground again. They were easy to ignore because he'd made it. He'd found it, probably through blind luck, because he knew the coordinates, and had them stored in his phone, but he was beyond Google Maps now. He didn't even know where his phone was.

He laid his head against the icy cold stone. It was a square, a cube, really. Big and unmarked except for the triskele, but clearly a grave. Derek and Cora still owned this part of the preserve, technically, so they were allowed to have it there, even though it wasn't anywhere near a cemetery. They'd petitioned the city and everything, it was all totally above board.

Stiles hadn't been aware of much when they'd been making the arrangements, but he did remember choosing the headstone out of a lineup because it was so obviously a grave. He'd been numb from missing Peter, still in shock, but he remembered knowing how Peter would laugh when he imagined unsuspecting hikers going by and getting freaked out by the grave in the middle of the woods.

Stiles remembered when he'd been so sure that Peter would be alive again soon. He remembered wanting him back with a visceral ache, but being soothed by the thought that every minute going by was bringing him one more hour closer to getting him.

"You asshole," Stiles said to the gravestone, through gritted teeth. "You fucking--" He coughed. His throat was dry as the desert from his run. " _Asshole_ _._ "

Stiles gripped the headstone until the edges bit into his raw, scraped palms. He'd come out here for a reason. He hadn't been out of the apartment in days, and he was losing it. He kept forgetting, talking to Peter when he wasn't there. No one was there.

He'd seen the sun starting to set out the window, and for some reason, even though it wasn't setting any differently than the last few weeks he'd been pacing his apartment from wall to wall, feeling rational thought and willingness to thrive slipping away, he couldn't watch it. He couldn't stand the thought of another night in his too-big bed, replaying all the things he'd been telling himself for months, but no longer believed: That he only had to be patient, that Peter wouldn't leave him alone, not after all the time they'd spent taming each other's demons. Their relationship was too much of an investment, Peter would say, but he'd scratch slightly-too-long fingernails down the back of Stiles' head while he did, softening the words with a familiar, tender touch.

The nape of Stiles' neck twitched with a phantom stroke. The wind. It had picked up and was making the paths of his tears sear with the cold. He knuckled them away and used the thick, sturdy stone to push himself up. He stayed on his knees, but instead of hanging from the marker, he pressed his hands against it, at once soothing his scrapes and keeping the only physical reminder he had of Peter at arm's length.

The moon was now high enough that he could see his own reflection in the dark stone. He looked like shit. He looked like a grown up version of the scared little kid who refused to sleep or eat after his mother had died. He barely remembered that kid. He remembered going to school in the fall, though and forgetting for long stretches that his mother was gone and not coming back, and he remembered hating himself for that...For a few minutes, until the next shiny thing caught his attention.

He wondered if that would happen to him this time. It was probably for the best. His grief was unreasonable, probably, almost a year later. So a guy he'd dated for a few years died. Life went on, right?

Even as he thought it, his stomach twisted and he lurched away from the stone to throw up. Fuck unreasonable, he thought, wiping his mouth and crawling back in front of the stone. He was half a working body without Peter. A golem from the stories his bubbe used to tell, but without a magic word to bring him to life.

He wasn't like Scott, who could pick up and move on after losing who he'd thought of as the love of his life. He was bullshitting himself if he thought he would just wake up one day and think, _oh, I_ ** _don't_** _need Peter like I need air._ He wasn't like that. He'd fixated and built his whole life and sense of self-worth around another person. Stupid, he knew, but he'd thought himself invincible because Peter had done the same. And Peter was smart, and wouldn't let himself be ended until they were both ready to let go.

"So where are you?" Stiles asked the stone and the ground underneath it where Peter was buried. "Huh? You promised me you'd stick around. You said we needed each other."

He sniffed, gagging from the acid in this throat. "I need you."

The stone was silent. The wind had died down, and there was no cosmic sign that anyone other than the insects and animals in the trees was watching him. He waited, straining his ears, sending out what little of his tired, deafened magic he had. There was only more silence.

"I fucking need you, you bastard!" He yelled at the stone, his voice breaking. "Why are you gone? You motherfucker, you left me and I _need_ \--"

A twig snapped behind him. He whipped his head around to see where it had come from, but there was nothing. He froze, not even breathing while he waited for another sound.

"Peter?" He whispered. He sounded like the child he'd been, clutching his dad's hand as they buried his mother beneath a grave just like this one.

Something swished in the direction he'd come from, but it was too dark to see anything. His pulse started pounding in his throat and he checked his pockets for his phone, to shine a light, to see if he could see...he realized he didn't have any pockets. He was dressed in his thin flannel PJs, the ones with the stain on the knee that he'd been wearing for three days because he hadn't planned to leave his apartment. His T-shirt didn't have a front pocket and he didn't have a coat or a sweater. Couldn't remember having lost one. He scrabbled around in the dirt for a few seconds, fruitlessly, just in case he'd had it in his hand, then felt stupid. Of course he hadn't. He could remember that far back, even if he couldn't remember leaving home.

A loud crack, from the same dark part of the forest, followed by the crunch of soft footsteps on leaves. He scrambled back, away from the noise, his breath fast as scared rabbit's. He couldn't go far. He hit the gravestone and it bit into his shoulder blades with its sharp edge. He still couldn't see shit, but the footsteps were getting closer. Too close for him to be able to run away, not as weak and spaced-out as he was. There was nowhere for him to run, except for back into the forest, and he didn't have confidence that he'd make it out of there alive.

A numb sort of calm came over him, and he twisted on his knees until he was facing the stone again. He slumped against it, his head bent at an awkward angle so that he could press his clammy cheek to the cold marble. His pulse slowed and he waited. Waited for a blow, or for a shout of alarm. Or a hand on his shoulder, curling possessively as if it couldn't bear to loosen, in case he flew away.

The footsteps were a lot nearer now. He could hear the way the ground changed under the feet, from spongy dead leaves in the denser forest to solid, damp earth in the clearing. They weren't loud, like a hiker or a ranger, tromping around in big boots. They were careful, but not the kind of quiet that meant Stiles wasn't supposed to hear them. Not an enemy then.

His shivers, died down now that his fight or flight response had been shoved aside, stopped completely. He'd never felt so still in his life, and he imagined he could slow down his heart to listen to the footsteps, hear them like a wolf did. If he were a wolf, he could maybe pick out the heartbeat, catch a familiar smell. Being human, though, he did nothing but wait, and wait, and wait, for the steps to come nearer, for the warmth of a living person to be close enough to feel, and he gasped--

"Peter."

"Stiles? What are you doing out here, buddy?"

Stiles flinched, and looked up into Scott's eyes, which were glowing with a tiny ember of red in the dark. Scott's body heat as he crouched next to Stiles was too much, and it made the other half of him sting from cold he'd almost forgotten about.

"Why are you here?" Stiles croaked.

Scott squinted apologetically. "A deputy saw your car and called it in. Your dad was worried."

"Oh. I'm f--"  He choked on the word _fine_. He wasn't fine, in reality, but that really shouldn't matter to him. He hadn't lived in anything close to reality since he'd turned around and seen Peter falling. Just a dream world, where rules of nature, like life and death, didn't matter.

His shivers came back, stronger, more like the shakes of a drug addict in withdrawal. It didn't quite grow into a panic attack--he was still too numb for panic--but he sat, gasping, against the stone for a long while, crumpling in slow motion into Scott's chest. To his credit, Scott never pulled or guided him in. He simply waited, then gave a sturdy landing place when Stiles couldn't keep his head up.

Scott's skin was even warmer when Stiles was touching it. Intoxicatingly warm. When the shakes subsided, he felt almost thawed out in places, like where an arm was clamped around his upper back, and where his shoulder was gripped by human-shaped fingers. It took a lot of effort to peel his sweat-damp front off of Scott's jacket, but he managed, and Scott let him go without protest. He stumbled to his feet, swaying, and was steadied by an offered arm.

It only took a few steps without Scott's support for Stiles to realize he wasn't going to make it more than a few yards alone. He slumped and focused on staying upright even though the world was spinning, then he nodded his head, and Scott's hands settled on him, turning him in the right direction and leading him away.  

"Where are your shoes?" Scott asked gently.

Stiles looked down at his bare feet and shrugged. Gone, or he'd never had them in the first place, but it didn't really matter which. Scott made them stop, and stuffed Stiles' feet into his own running shoes, leaving Scott in only his socks, whiter than Stiles' untanned feet had been in the dark.

The trip was long, and Stiles didn't pay attention to anything beyond putting one stinging, aching foot in front of the other. He didn't have to, because Scott had him, and pulled him around rocks and through bushes, and let him have breaks when he needed them, leaning him up against trees when his vision blurred and spun dizzily.

Scott's car emerged long after Stiles had lost all concept of time passing, parked haphazardly next to Stiles' jeep, the door wide open. The warning beep was still going, frantically telling Scott he'd left his lights on, even though Scott had been nowhere near the off switch. He'd been in the forest with Stiles, rescuing him. Again.

They were probably even, after all these years, but Stiles still hated that whenever Scott had to save him, it was from something trivial, like a sprained ankle, or something equally human. These days, when they were so rarely at war with anything, Scott saved up his favours for things like near-fatal wolfsbane poisoning, or an angry ghost with intent to kill. Life or death situations, not mild concussions or fainting spells. Of _course_ Scott would be the one to save Stiles from this little scrape, even though they hadn't spoken in weeks.

Stiles let himself be half-carried to the passenger side of Scott's car, casting a half-hearted questioning glance at the jeep.

"I'll come back tomorrow and pick it up," Scott said, then he closed Stiles' door and sat in his own seat, turning the key in the ignition and finally cutting off the warning mid-beep.

Stiles wasn't sure if he said it out loud, but he was thinking his thanks. The heat was blasting and it was making his exhausted body feel even slower and more liquid, so he curled up on the seat, pulling feet covered by Scott's shoes into his legs and closing his eyes. The rest of him got warmer, but his cheek was still cold, pressed up against the glass.

He remembered, suddenly, the last time they'd done this: Scott driving, Stiles a passenger, his face against the window. They'd been coming home from the piss poor funeral they'd held, and Stiles had been so sure. He'd held to his belief like a kid unwilling to let Santa Claus not be real, but his conviction had been just as helpful. In the end, the Easter bunny was a fiction, the tooth fairy was his dad, and dead people usually stayed dead. Even if someone managed to come back, the likelihood of it happening a second time was a negligible percentage.   

"Stiles?"

He jolted, smearing a print onto the glass. He lifted his head up with great difficulty, and let it loll in Scott's direction. When he opened his eyes, he realized his lashes were wet, and he scrubbed the itchy tear tracks off his face with a clumsy hand, like an overtired child.

"Yeah," he slurred, his eyes already falling closed again. Everything took energy, and that was something he didn't have too much of anymore.

"I'm sorry. For what we did. It was stupid and heavy-handed, and I should've known better."

Stiles nodded, and mumbled, "S'okay."

It was, now. He was ready to forgive, when before, he'd been too prideful and stubborn to see that Scott had gone overboard, but hadn't been as wrong as Stiles had thought. Scott relaxed next to him and started talking to fill the silence that was no longer tense, but Stiles tuned it out, mostly. He returned his temple to the window and stared at the streetlights going by, too close for him to really follow, but not passing as nauseatingly quick as the white lines on the road beside him.

When they both woke up in the morning, they wouldn't be back to their old ways, inseparable as brothers and each other's vault of secrets. It would take time to reach that level again, if they ever did. He was too jaded to trust the way he used to, and too in love with Peter to let go of him the way Scott and the pack wanted him too, but Stiles could forgive Scott for not being the boy that he grew up with.

Snatches of Scott's monologue reached him, but nothing was more interesting than the call of sleep.

"--talking to Deaton, and he thinks this is more than depression. The nightmares, the way you said you were in pain, he thinks you might have--

Stiles let that float away, wishing his consciousness would go with it.  

"--you're not a wolf, but you--"

Sleep came easier when he realized he was done. Just...done, with the parody of life he was living, without Peter as his anchor, anchoring Peter in turn. They wouldn't have the time for patching things up because Stiles' time had run out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, things are getting dire, guys. One more chapter to go. Nov 13.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Suicide attempt.

Stiles didn't know he knew the one year anniversary of Peter's death until he woke up that morning. It wasn't like he'd marked it in his agenda. When it had happened, he'd been convinced that Peter would be back before the month was out, at the latest. After that happened, it would be just another date in the calendar. Something in his brain might've twigged to it, sent a chill of foreboding down his spine, but he would have shrugged it off because he wouldn't remember why that day had held any significance. 

To say that he woke up was actually a bit of a stretch. He'd actually laid  awake the whole night, still and calm in a way he hadn't managed to be for months. He'd watched the clock tick over to midnight, and seen the sun peek over the horizon through his window. As soon as the sky was light enough that he could see the vague shapes of his furniture without turning the lights on, he'd gotten up, dressed in actual clothes for once, and felt his way along the walls to the living room. 

He'd been standing in front of his bookshelf for a few minutes, running his fingers along broken spines and dusty clutter. He leaned into the shadowy shelves and inhaled deeply, bringing the scent of old books into his lungs. 

He didn't normally wish for werewolf senses. He thought it would be too much for someone like him to handle, and Peter had kissed the inferiority complex into submission years ago. (Mostly. He'd still needed a refresher every once in a while, when his slow legs held them back, or an ache lingered long past the end of a scuffle, reminding him of his fragile bones.) But there were times, like this one, when he wished he could smell the oil of skin that penetrated deep into well-thumbed pages. Peter's had faded weeks and weeks ago--to Stiles' human nose--and Stiles hadn't managed to recreate the blend of shampoo, cologne and salty skin that used to linger on Peter's pillow for Stiles to bury his face in as soon as Peter got up. 

The sun was higher now, golden and heavy on the tops of buildings next to the apartment. Stiles looked directly at it, and his eyes stung, the first layer of protection burned off of them, so he could start his day fresh. 

A whole year.

His breath came out shaky, and he turned away from the sunny window. The day wasn't getting any longer, and he had things to do. 

He sat on the couch and booted up his laptop, deleted all the history and anything he wouldn't want his grandmother or--more importantly--his dad to see. It wasn't porn he was trashing, or embarrassing pictures; It was PDF copies of spellbooks he wasn't supposed to have, that detailed rituals he wasn't supposed to know about. Other things, like invoices for bullets he wasn't supposed to use, were wiped away, his accounts from less-than-reputable suppliers closed, even though they'd never been under his real name. 

Stiles thought of the book that he'd returned to its place on the shelf. He'd read the pages he'd discovered for many nights in a row, and hovered his thumb over the phone number of a witch he knew would take the money and not ask questions a few dozen times, but in the end, he hadn't done anything. He wondered if Peter would be disappointed in him for chickening out. Stiles used to be sure that Peter wouldn't want him to make that call for his sake, but he used to be sure of a lot of things when it came to Peter.

With his laptop wiped--barring the pictures he had of the pack and his dad--he moved on to the kitchen. He didn't have much in the way of perishables, but he poured some protein shakes down the drain and chugged the last three inches of milk in the carton. It made him more thirsty than he'd been before, and his mouth and throat felt coated in cold, sweet glue. The crackers, he left for the mice, if they were clever enough to get them before someone else did a more thorough once over of the place before it was put on the market. 

He almost cleaned the bathroom, but it seemed too morbid, like he was erasing every trace of himself, even his DNA from the drain in the sink. He packed up all his clothes, though, in the boxes Scott and the others had left behind when they'd tried to take Peter's stuff. He smiled viciously at the irony as he filled them, but he wasn't doing it to be petty. He remembered how long his mom's stuff had hung around the house after she'd died, because his dad had dreaded boxing it all up to donate. He wouldn't make his dad do that again, not when he was already breaking his heart.

He stopped there, in the middle of the pile of boxes, and listened to the five voicemails his dad had left him in the last week. His dad sounded more and more anxious with every one, pleading for Stiles to just call, tell him he was okay, let him help. He said, in a choked voice, that he'd been through what Stiles was going through right now. 

Stiles wished he could take the help he was offered. His father had, eventually, when Melissa offered a hand and an ear, and he'd started living again. Stiles tried to tell himself that lots of people felt grief and loss and they got over it, some quicker than others, but most of them got there. Sometimes it happened almost against their will; Stiles remembered the day he first realized that he'd been thinking about his mom without wanting to cry. The memory wasn't free of pain--he didn't think it ever would be--but he could ignore the twinge, shake it off and continue about his day. He'd cried harder than he had in weeks when he noticed it. 

He missed the way he used to miss her, because when it was at its most fresh, he would think of her all the time, and the pain had a clarity to it that made her feel almost near to him.

It was different this time. It had been almost a month since he'd accepted the diamond-hard truth, and far longer since he'd started to have his doubts. Long enough for him to heal, to stop clutching his grief so close to his chest, but his fingers refused to unclench. He'd tried to picture a distant future in which he could smile again and mean it, and he didn't shake from the withdrawal of his safety net, his solid bedrock in an earthquake-ridden wasteland. 

He stopped doing that because the panic attacks weren't worth it. 

He looked around his room, his and Peter's room, for anything that should be done. He walked through the wall, checking the bathroom, the kitchen, a last minute sweep. Satisfied that there was nothing more to do, he opened his laptop one more time, bringing up the emails he'd written to each of the pack members who meant anything to him. They'd be sent in about two hours, plenty of time for him to do what he needed to do. 

He hoped it would be enough. They'd patched it up as much as they could, texting him friendly, probing messages when Scott had told them he wouldn't delete them without even looking. He'd sent back a few short replies, enough to smooth things over, but not more than he had the energy to give, and he certainly didn't agree to meet with them. He was sick of the pity, and the way they were too gentle with him, even Derek, who'd mostly unlearned gentle around the second or third time his world had crumbled into ash and rubble around him. 

They'd be okay, and they'd make sure his dad was okay too. They'd all lost people before, and they'd made it through, more or less intact. He didn't know if the number of ghosts they collectively mourned would make it easier or harder to lose one more, but he wouldn't be around to know the answer, so it didn't really matter.

He picked up his keys, his wallet--empty of everything except as many pieces of ID as possible--and shrugged on a windbreaker in a durable, inorganic material that would withstand the elements for a while. He got into his jeep and pulled out of his parking space, squinting in the early morning light. 

He'd known as soon as he knew he had to do this that he would do it before most of Beacon Hills had stirred from their bed. The darkness had been Peter's comfort zone, but the hours just after dawn had been their time. Peter would come back, warm and energized after a run and crawl into bed, or Stiles would meet him on the edge of the preserve with coffee, a change of clothes, and a long, tight embrace. It'd felt like only the two of them existed in those times, and in a way, they had. No one else had mattered between the hours of darkness and full daytime. Not the pack, not Stiles' dad, or their enemies or allies. Those things would matter again, later, but for a short time, all they needed was each other. 

The preserve was quiet when he arrived and climbed out of his vehicle. It was early, even for the pre-work joggers and the enthusiastic dog walkers. Birds chirped and branches rustled, and it occurred to Stiles that it was a beautiful day, but he couldn't enjoy it. Everything was grey around him as he walked into the trees, singlemindedly putting one step in front of the other. 

He didn't have a great sense of direction, but he was fairly certain of where he was going. He was aware of the location of Peter's grave the whole way, somewhere to the right of him, getting closer and farther away as the barely-there path twisted and turned him. He didn't walk toward it, no matter how hard it pulled at him, because if he went to it, he wouldn't be able to leave, and he wouldn't finish what he needed to do before his dad or Scott figured out he was gone.

It was way too easy to get lost there. He'd been losing time during waking hours, waking up with his shoes half on and his hand on the door, in the middle of the night or halfway through the day. It was a miracle he hadn't gotten behind the wheel when he was half-aware, drowning in memories and killed someone. 

The sun beat down on him with blazing power by the time he arrived at the cliff, the grey mist burned away. It didn't warm his insides at all, just made him sweat and squint over the crest to the miles of forest. If he walked to the edge, he'd be able to look down and see a twisting creek, too narrow to be a river, but too strong to be just a brook. 

_ Follow the water,  _ Peter used to say .  _ It'll take you somewhere different from where you are. It might not be safer, but at least it isn't the same.  _

He thought he'd be calm when he finally stood at the crumbling edge of the cliff. His doubts were gone, his mind was made up, and he didn't hesitate to step over the guardrail, ignoring the bright yellow warning signs. He hadn't expected his heart to beat so quickly or his hands to quake by his sides. Sweat beaded in the small of his back and on his temple. 

Despite his body's autonomous panic response, Stiles felt better than he had in a long time. The wind was blowing a little bit, cooling the sheen of perspiration on his face, and the morning air, still crisp even as it warmed toward stifling, filled his lungs fully, but in an unpracticed way, like he hadn't taken a full breath in weeks. 

This was it. 10 years of wolves, witches , and demons and he'd survived, but this, he wouldn't. He wondered what his 16 year old self would say, if he'd be angry, or embarrassed for the pathetic human being he'd become, who couldn't pick up and move on after a guy he loved up and died on him. But then, he remembered the week his 16 year old self spent staring at the ceiling at night, after Lydia rejected him with a finality he was finally able to comprehend, and he thought his past self would understand. 

Time was ticking, he reminded himself. Morning was slipping away, and he had somewhere to be. He wasn't convinced there was an afterlife, but after everything he'd seen, he wasn't willing to rule it out, and that was one thing he could still hope for. He'd lost all of his ability to pray for Peter to come back and prove him wrong, but he could wish with the fervency of a child for Peter to be waiting when he was done with what he had to do. 

It was a long way down, and Stiles looked right at the bottom as he inched his shoes toward the edge. He wanted to see his end as it rushed toward him. His feet stalled when they were halfway into the air and he sobbed, frustrated with his own survival instinct. He was ready. He was finished, dried up and empty. He had nothing to live for, not when his friends and his dad looked at him like they were secretly disgusted by his pitiful existence. So why was it so hard to take the last step? 

In the end, he didn't need to. 

One. The ground underneath him shifted, the dirt crumbled under his heels and he pitched forward, his arms flung out to break his fall with only air. 

Two. His stomach dipped and a yell was ripped from his throat as the wind picked up.

Three. He had an absent thought that he'd be cold as he fell, but he didn't have to worry about being cold at the bottom. 

Four. He felt a hooking feeling in his gut, pulling his insides tight as he pitched forward. 

Five. He stopped falling. His clothes cut into his skin painfully as he was jerked back into a warm, solid body. He was out of breath and on his back quicker than he could comprehend. 

Six. Nothing. His heart continued to race, but he was still as a rabbit caught in the gaze of a predator. 

His brain came back online, along with his control of his limbs, and he tensed his body like a child in a tantrum, pulling away from the arms that held him back. They wouldn't move, didn't even budge from Stiles' best effort. 

"Sh." 

The sound buzzed in his ear, unvoiced, unintelligible from one person to the next, but Stiles knew. 

"Peter--" He gasped. 

"Now, why would you go and do a thing like that?"

The noise Stiles made was like a battle cry, and this time, when he turned around in Peter's arms, there was no resistance. Peter let angry fists fly, dodging some, letting others land and thud uselessly against unmarked flesh. Stiles would have gone on long enough to leave a bruise, beating months of his rage and misery into the person who was responsible, if he hadn't been so physically weak. He saw his arms and noticed what he hadn't all this time. They were skinny and no longer as muscled as they'd been when Peter had made him learn to protect himself without the help of wolves. 

His engine sputtered out and he slumped into Peter's chest, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Peter's hands pulled him in, one tucked around his waist, and the other cradling his neck, just like they used to hold him, for long hours on the couch, or after nightmares, or in public, the show of casual possession sending a thrill up his spine. 

He didn't even realize he was crying until Peter ducked his head down to kiss away the wetness, shushing him in soft tones. He sobbed into Peter's shirt, the pain of every sleepless night and long, aimless day pouring out of him in a scalding rush of tears. He gripped Peter's clothes with clawlike fingers and realized that they were the same ones he was buried in, but they weren't covered in muck like they should have been. They were faded and worn, like they were left out in the sun and bleached by the light and heat, but clean and dry. 

"Where were you?" Stiles croaked, his chest still shaking. "Where were you? You were gone."

"I'm sorry, my love."

"You were--just gone, I couldn't--" 

"I'm so sorry. I'm here now. I came as fast as I could."

"You  _ asshole _ ," Stiles choked, lifting his hand for one final, sluggish hit to Peter's chest. "I needed you, and you weren't there." 

"I know. But I came back, I'm with you now, dear one." 

His anger drained away with the sound of Peter's voice saying anything and everything, and was replaced by a bright, buoyant feeling. He sat on the hard ground, Peter's arms holding him, Peter's hands brushing exposed skin, and he felt like he could reach out and touch the cord that tied them together. It was warm and glowing and solid in his mind, and he could almost catch glimpses of it when he blinked quickly, but he didn't want to practice too much because he didn't want to look away from Peter's face unless he absolutely had to. 

He heard the sirens around the same time as he actually started listening to the words Peter was saying. Two hours must have passed, and his dad was on his way, but Stiles tuned it out and focused on Peter. 

"--It was the only way. I could have reached into your mind and persuaded you to do it sooner, but I--" Peter's voice failed. "I wanted you to have a chance to leave me behind." 

"Why was it the only way?" 

Peter blinked, and smiled, pleased that Stiles was listening, or that he was finally calm enough to respond. "Sacrifice was the name of the game, here. Your stupid move out here got me off on a technicality. And we're going to have a talk about coping mechanisms when you've slept for about a year." 

Stiles laughed wetly and nestled himself deeper in Peter's warmth. He found himself blinking slower and slower the longer he simply breathed in his scent and presence. 

"Will we talk to Deaton too?" He mumbled, and he felt Peter's hands tighten on his body. 

"Yes." Peter tipped Stiles' chin up and traced the tracks of dried tears. "You grieved too hard, darling. I don't think that's normal."

"Nothing's normal around here." 

Peter's lips quirked up, and Stiles' chest ached from the familiar sight. "True."

"I mean, are you an angel now? A ghost?" 

"No." Peter rubbed over his heart like he almost couldn't believe it himself. "Flesh and blood, still. Just lucky, and well-connected with witches who need to line their pockets." 

"I'm glad." Stiles let his eyes fall shut, unable to hold up heavy lids for another second. He didn't see, but definitely felt Peter tense for a few seconds, then relax again. He almost roused himself to ask what was wrong, but then he heard it: A far away rustling in the trees. The pack was coming, expecting to find Stiles dead. He smiled dazedly into Peter's cotton shirt at the thought of his dad's relief and his own selfish, self-righteous _I told you so_ that was coming to them. 

"Peter?" 

"Yes?" 

"Don't go away again. Not until we're both ready." 

"I won't. I promise." 

"Me too."

Stiles let himself fall this time, safe and whole for the first time in a year. The crashing in the woods was getting louder, but he didn't let it hold him back because Peter would take care of it. Peter always took care of him. All he had to do was hope--pray, wish, demand of the universe-- that this time, they'd keep their promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Freaking FINALLY. Jeez. Why did I put you through that?? Because I'm a sadist, that's why. But it was a good hurt, I hope. I also hope that you enjoyed my first attempt at Steter. There's another one coming soon, probably, then I assume I'll get back with the regularly scheduled Sterek program. But who knows???!!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and commenting if you have!


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